Xerox

Xerox who was the leader and giant in the copier industry is now failing Michael Hiltzik provides an account of how Xerox started. In the late 1960s, Xerox founded a research center at Palo Alto, Calif. In time, that facility, known as PARC, became ground zero of the computer revolution, as recounted here. In the dinosaur era of computing, a typical machine filled a large room and was shared by dozens of researchers. Los Angeles Times editor Hiltzik credits Robert W. Taylor, who assembled the PARC team, with changing that. Taylors field was psychology, not engineering; but his vision of the computer as a communications device was a radical departure. He got his chance to realize it when Xeroxs chief scientist Jacob Goldman persuaded his superiors to launch a basic research facility along the line of AT&Ts famed Bell Labs. Xerox management, more interested in marketable products than in pure science, nearly killed the center before it opened. But Taylor gradually built his team of young computer hotshots, and the innovations flowed: mouse, Ethernet, even the term “personal computer. By 1973, a team led by Chuck Thacker had created Alto, a computer small enough to fit under a desk. Its